[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 121431] New: Writer/UI: Usability Issue in Setting the Language for Selected Text

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121431

            Bug ID: 121431
           Summary: Writer/UI: Usability Issue in Setting the Language for
                    Selected Text
           Product: LibreOffice
           Version: 5.1.6.2 release
          Hardware: All
                OS: Linux (All)
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: medium
         Component: Writer
          Assignee: libreoffice-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
          Reporter: adalbert.hanssen at gmx.de

This Issue was found in 
Version: 5.1.6.2, Build-ID: 1:5.1.6~rc2-0ubuntu1~xenial4, CPU-Threads: 4;
BS-Version: Linux 4.4; UI-Render: Standard; Gebietsschema: de-DE (de_DE.UTF-8);
Calc: group

and also in

LibreOffice Writer Version 6.1.2.1, Build ID:
65905a128db06ba48db947242809d14d3f9a93fe, CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.4; UI
render: default; VCL: gt 

but it is likely to be present in other versions too. BTW: I can not select
version 6.1.2.1 in the drop down list of the bug reporting software.

I have a multilingual document. In order to set the language of some
paragraphs, I select them with the mouse. After selecting text I set the
language for those paragraphs e.g. to English(US).

However, this setting does not work as expected. If my selection spans more
than one paragraph, setting the new language only affects the last one.
Fortunately setting affects the whole last paragraph, even if it is only
partially selected. I don’t mind that whole last paragraph is set to the new
language, but I expect this operation to work as if the whole paragraphs with
at least one character marked in them is set to the new language if my
selection spans more than one paragraph. One should be able to set the language
for more than one paragraph in one step.

Similar critics also applies to setting the language for selection only: I
expect that prior to actually applying the new language, the current selection
is automatically extended to cover whole words (at both ends of the selection)
because language is a property of at least words, not parts of them.

To prevent any ambiguity for the user I propose to visually extend the
selection during this process and leave it afterwards such that the user sees
what LibreOffice Writer does when setting the language for some selected part
of a document.

One more proposal (which goes beyond fixing this bug): There should be a
function associated to a selection, let’s call it “extend selection”, which
extends the selection to all involved words if the current selection is less
than a paragraph. This function should be callable through the context menu of
the current selection (like Cut/Copy/Paste/Paste
Special/Character/Paragraph/Bullets/...). If the current selection covers more
than one complete paragraphs the extended selection should first cover the
whole paragraphs (if necessary extending at both ends of the selection to the
paragraph beginning and the paragraph end). If it is applied to whole selected
paragraphs, the extension should expand to all neighboring paragraphs using the
same style. In a document with text and headlines marked properly with a style
sheet, this one would select e.g. all text under a specific headline (unless
there are paragraphs using other styles arranged under the same headline – in
this case I would propose one more step of “extend selection” to select
everything up to the next level of headlines etc. 

But this part of my post is just a future usability improvement not my bug
report itself. But there already must be some function “extend selection”: If I
double-click on a word, the whole word is marked. If I triple click, the whole
sentence is marked. If I quadruple-click, the whole paragraph is marked. The
quintuple-click seems to be not yet implemented, however: This one would mean:
extend to all neighboring paragraphs using the same style and so on.

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